Partnerships = Growth Hack w/🟠HubSpot Media Network Partnerships Lead Carly Baker🟠 | Ep. 999

Jay Schwedelson: Welcome to Do This, Not That, the podcast for marketers. You'll walk away from each episode with actionable tips you can test immediately. You'll hear from the best minds in marketing who will share tactics, quick wins, and pitfalls to avoid. We'll also dig into life, pop culture, culture, and the chaos that is our everyday. I'm Jay Schwedelson. Let's do this, not that. We are back for do this, not that podcast presented by Marigold, and I have a really awesome, amazing human guest here today. So who is here? We have Carly Baker. Now, you don't know her, then you stink. But she is leading all media partnerships at HubSpot Media Network. And she's been in it developing podcasts, doing owned, earned, paid media strategies on some of the biggest podcasts on the planet, like My First Million, Marketing Against the Grain, a zillion other ones. She's doing all the newsletter stuff, masters in marketing. It's all her fault over there at the HubSpot Media Network. And we're gonna dig into some crazy stuff today talking about growth hacks, talking about owned media, podcasting, everything. Carly, welcome to the show.

Carly Baker: Thank you so much, and thank you for that very flattering intro.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. We're gonna do everyone always usually like, tell me your life story, whatever. I don't wanna do that. Here's the deal. Alright? What you don't know about Carly is that she is one of the greatest oboists that you're ever gonna come across. It's true. Am I is that a fact or not?

Carly Baker: It I mean, I think most people don't know oboists, but that I I feel confident agreeing in saying that that's yes. That's the case.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright. So before all this media network stuff at HubSpot, she was a professional musician. She was involved in classical music, orchestra stuff, and she played oboe forever. And so we're gonna play a game right now. Are you ready for this, Carly? It's called oboe or oh no. I didn't tell her before this, and she's like, what did I just sign up for? Alright. Here's how it works.

Carly Baker: Let's go. Let's go.

Jay Schwedelson: I'm ask you very, very random questions.

Carly Baker: Okay.

Jay Schwedelson: And you either say, oh, Bo, if you like it or oh, no, if you don't like it.

Carly Baker: Okay. Okay. Are you ready? Yes.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. Good. Here we go. The first question. Wednesday Adam show season two is coming out this summer. Oboe or oh, no?

Carly Baker: Oboe. A %. Very big

Jay Schwedelson: fan of season one?

Carly Baker: Yes. Of course. Very, very big fan of Jenna Ortega as everyone is. So that's a that's a solid Oboe for me. Okay. Alright.

Jay Schwedelson: Next one. Travis Kelce is allegedly taking acting lessons to prep for a rom com this summer. Oboe or oh no?

Carly Baker: Oh no. Oh no. Some things some things are better left on the field, and I think Travis Kelce might be one of them.

Jay Schwedelson: Amazing. Alright. The last one. This one's very, very, very deep important.

Carly Baker: Okay.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. Freakier Friday, the sequel to Freaky Friday is coming out with Lindsay Lohan this summer. Oh, beau or oh, no?

Carly Baker: Oh, this is hard. What's in the middle? What's in the middle of oh, oh, oh, no? What if I

Jay Schwedelson: Oh, oh, shmo.

Carly Baker: Oh, shmo. I love to see, I love to see hyper relevant, like, things from the early two thousands try to make a comeback in these times. So it could be good. It could be bad. We'll have to see. I need the trailer. I need the trailer to decide.

Jay Schwedelson: Nostalgia marketing. It's here. So that was that the first time you ever played oboe or oh no?

Carly Baker: It was. It was the first time.

Jay Schwedelson: All right, you can play it at home with your friends. It's going to take off. All right, let's get into the important stuff. All right, we're going to go through some rapid questions for Carly because she's leading media partnerships at the HubSpot Media Network. She knows this stuff. So I want to know stuff. All right, here's my first rapid question for you. What is a growth hack that nobody is really talking about that actually works?

Carly Baker: Oh, okay. This is question. My easy answer to this my one my one word easy answer to this is just partnerships. Underutilized either underutilized or not formatted in a way that's actually beneficial for either party. If you can set up partnerships and create a system of mutually beneficial partnerships, that is the number one growth hack. I say this because especially someone like me who I work with creators, I work with media companies, I work with tech companies, I work with D2C. Everyone's having the same challenges right now. The more that we can work together to combat those challenges, the more you're just going to be put in front of the right audience. Finding your audience right now is really hard and working with others, who have audiences can help you do that. So I say partnerships is definitely, I think, gonna increasingly become more of a center of growth in the future for sure.

Jay Schwedelson: So let me ask you a question. If somebody is out there, they're listening, they're not like a big company, they're not a HubSpot, they're a smaller company, but they got a little newsletter, maybe they have a podcast, or maybe they have a little following on social and they want to partner. When you go to partner, do you have to partner with equal size people? Or how do you would you have to match up perfectly? Or how does that fit happen?

Carly Baker: Yeah. So this is a great question. Actually, most of the partnerships that we do here are not with publishers that are the same size as us. Most of them are with partners that are smaller than us. The notion that partnerships have to be, I am giving you one piece of ad inventory that reaches this many people for a piece of your ad inventory that reaches the same amount of people is just so unrealistic. I also think when you're the way that we think about audience size too has changed. For me, I prefer to work with smaller publishers and people with smaller audiences because they're often more engaged. I prefer to go the niche route because you know that more confidently, the audience is more invested in that media brand or in that person versus working with someone who has a gigantic list of people that are super unengaged. So I actually often prefer to work with smaller folks. There's always different ways to do a value exchange. As I said, it doesn't have to be one to one. So if I have a channel that converts well and it's different than your channel that converts well, that's fine, we can make it happen. It doesn't always have to be one to one.

Jay Schwedelson: And can you approach somebody that like, let's say you like their newsletter or they have a really active social following, but you don't see them doing any kind of like partner stuff or any ads in any of your stuff. Can you approach them and like, listen, maybe you don't have any ads right now, but we'd love to partner with you. Would you consider it? I mean, is that taboo or is that okay?

Carly Baker: No. I think it's a % okay. And I know this has actually been something that I've experienced myself. A lot of times with partnerships, especially with folks that are maybe running their media arm or their media business themselves or their creator partnerships or something that feels really far away and really unapproachable. So a lot of the times they just don't have those set up because it's just something additional that they have to add to their infrastructure. We've certainly worked with a lot of creators where I've gone to and they've maybe never done partnerships with a brand before, but they're able to editorially or from an infrastructure perspective, make it happen. And for me, a lot of calls that I go on, it might not make sense for us to partner now, but the earlier you can start the relationship and start things going, then in the future you're going to be top of mind maybe when they are able to execute upon something like that. So I never hesitate. I always reach out to people no matter what. And it's always just good to say, hey, and that you like what they're doing and to sort of open the door and wait for them to come through even if it's not right now.

Jay Schwedelson: Well, know, it's so true because like, it's kind of way I met you. I mean, I met you when we were like, like first few episodes and now here you are a zillion episodes later on the show. So it is good to kind of lay the groundwork. And okay, super random question though. You know more about podcasting than just about anybody in the planet because you've grown so many shows. Mhmm. What makes a show? What is the secret sauce to a bingeable show?

Carly Baker: Oh, to a bingeable show? I think having consistent delivery of value that your audience is looking for. I think right now we see so many shows that are doing the same thing. They're not creating content for their audience, they're creating content based on who they perceive their competitors in this space are and what they're doing. I think the future of growth across mediums honestly is just going to be audience first content. Having a direct line of feedback with your audience, giving them what they're asking for, what they want, and having that connection with them is huge.

Jay Schwedelson: Okay. I love that. Want to now this is for me. Me, I need to know this how you feel about this. Sometimes I'll have people come on the show, we'll record an episode and I'll finish recording like, that was the worst thing of all time. I don't even want to listen to that. I think it's garbage. And I'll tell my team, put down the back burner. I don't wanna release it.

Carly Baker: Mhmm.

Jay Schwedelson: Do is that the right move? Should you everyone just be releasing it. You know, you did it. Just get it out there. Is it okay to do stuff? Just say, nope. Never because you don't wanna release garbage. Where do you fall on that?

Carly Baker: Yeah. I I think it's it's totally fine to do that. I think having an empathetic approach and like really being honest with yourself about why you didn't like the episode. I know in certain cases, even that I've been in, like I've had an interview myself and been like, you know what? I didn't feel like I really articulated things the way that I wanted to, or I came across, or I did a great job of explaining things. Or, you know, I feel like you can kind of tell at end of the interview if you like nailed it or if you don't feel great about it. And so I've been in situations where I've just told the person, Hey, I don't feel like I really gave that my best shot. Are you open to rerecording or doing it again? Having that flexibility, I think on the side of the host and the guest is great. So yeah, I mean, you can take it down, you can do a rerecord. I think you can also, and this is something that so many folks I wish did more is like doing the pre interview. So if you're having a guest on where you're not quite sure if they really have experience doing interviews or if they're camera ready or how much prep they need, those types of things, you can kind of do a pre interview to be able to make that call of like whether you want to actually have them on the show or not, just to prevent kind of some of those things, especially for maybe folks that you don't know or there's not other interviews of them that you can listen to or just sort of that social proof isn't there. I think the pre interview can help. And it can be as easy as like sending them a questionnaire, your producer getting on with them for fifteen minutes, like kind of just doing a little bit of a vibe check and seeing how they respond to kind of like a mock interview and then, sort of pass or failing them based on that as well as an option.

Jay Schwedelson: Right. So exactly what I don't do because I'm a slacker, I'm a loser, but I will. I'm going to do this now. I will not be a slacker or loser. Speaking of loser, right now organic reach is tough. If you're trying to grow your newsletter subscriber base, you're trying to grow awareness for a webinar, your podcast, whatever. So I feel like, you know, paid is where it's at. And I'm assuming that you are testing all sorts of different paid stuff to grow all your different media. Where is the best place to spend your money right now to get reach with paid media?

Carly Baker: Oh, this is a great question. I actually would say that paid is one of the weaker links in terms of things that I feel like I personally excel at and have a strong strategy for. And I would say that because I work across so many different platforms and every platform is different. I'm actually curious, I might throw this question back at you, working in the partnership space and having done a lot of the work that I've done in the creator space as well, it's definitely a buyer's marketplace. I mean, you can buy a YouTube view, you can buy a subscriber, you can buy a download, like you can buy everything. And so I'm wondering because it's such a buyer's marketplace, like is will paid even matter in the future? Like, will these publicly available numbers, views, subscribers, etcetera, like, will those even matter to audiences or to brands in the future because it's such a pay to play marketplace? That's just something I find myself thinking about a lot. We try as much as possible to not invest in low quality paid. So low quality paid would be buying a download because a download is not a person that's actually listening to your podcast or buying a YouTube view because we want our content to be in front of real people. But there's definitely ways to have more like campaign based media buying that works well for us. So for our newsletters, we run meta ads and we run meta ads for offers that are branded as our newsletters for the newsletter in general. Meta ads has definitely been a big thing for us, but the return on ad spend there is not great, but it's the best option out of all of them. So meta ads work well for us. We also do a lot more direct media buying. So on our monetization side, we buy ads directly from creators and that's giving us the best return on ad spend there Just because we're getting in front of an audience that's new to us, we're seeing higher level of conversions. We know that editorially it makes sense to get in front of that audience. So there's a little bit of a different strategy, but overall we try to do really targeted media buying.

Jay Schwedelson: Yeah, I'm totally on board with all that. And for us, what we're looking at is some of the alternative networks, things like Reddit, Pinterest, some of the areas that have a lot of inventory that are just untapped and they're doing really well in terms of paid media. So you talk about creators. I'm curious, what is the future? Is it creators of the future or media companies are the future?

Carly Baker: Oh, I think the line between creators and media companies is a little bit blurred because we're seeing a lot more creators build their own business as media companies. I feel like every day on LinkedIn, I'm seeing this more. And I'd love to see this. My experience of working with creators specifically in the business space and in the podcast space is that they've been treating their content like a business since the start. And so they've always had a direct audience to creator monetization arm. They've always had a content engine. They've always had distribution. They've worked with brands. They've basically built media companies around themselves, whether they call it a media company or not. I think we're in an era of trust and personality, especially in the case of just AI and content and not being such a big thing right now. On the media side, it's really hard to not be in the sea of sameness. I think we're definitely battling against that as well. Everyone's creating more. I think I saw this stuff at 95% of the content on the Internet is from the last three years. There's just more noise out there than ever. And when we are looking at content on the internet and we're scrolling, think about your own media diet and your own behavior. I'm much more excited to see an individual talk about something than to see a piece of content with logos all over it, with a ton of B roll, with content that's shot in an office. It's just totally a different ballgame, I think. I hope that more media companies, and this is something that we do, put a face or put a creator at the front of their brand and try to learn more from the greater creator economy space and really harness that personality led content, I think is huge. The next phase of creator dom that we're going to see is we're going to see an explosion of communities. I've been really bullish on communities for a long time. I used to run a community here of our podcasters. I think because it's so hard to find content that's valuable and to find other people that want to engage about it, I guess with the exception of maybe like Reddit communities, I really do think that closed spaces on the internet are going to make a huge comeback and that creators are going to start to, or not start to, they're gonna continue to funnel their audiences there. And I think the explosion of Substack is a really great example of that.

Jay Schwedelson: I totally agree with you. And you happen to work for this is not a commercial for HubSpot, but I think that HubSpot has done a great job with turning their leaders into creators. I mean, you look at, Darmesh or Kip or whoever, your founders, your CMOs, the fact that everyone knows them by first name and they're putting out content, I think it's a playbook that, you know, everyone should follow. Alright. I have a hard left turn question

Carly Baker: Okay.

Jay Schwedelson: That I wanna ask you here, which before we wrap up. So you a lot of people in the marketing world, not a lot, but a decent number come from a creative background. They were involved in the arts. In high school, they did all the plays. Maybe after they did, they played music, all this stuff. And then it it didn't fully pan out. They couldn't have do this for the rest of their lives. And they're like, alright. The closest thing is kinda like this marketing game. So I'm going go do that because I could still get my creative juices going. And I'm the least creative person on earth. I played the saxophone, was terrible. I played the drums, I was even worse. I did school plays, it was embarrassing. And I didn't have the creative thing, but I always feel for people that are have that creative thing their whole life and now they're just the marketing person. And so are you able to really feel that fulfillment in being creative in the marketing world? Are you still like for all those creative people that are out there, is the right path for them? Can you motivate them, make them feel good that it's still okay?

Carly Baker: This is a great question. I feel like I could talk about this for two hours because it's still a question that I actually actively ask myself almost every day. I'm glad that you called it out because I do wish that more people talked about the creative to corporate route. We hear so much about the corporate to creative route, but not really the other way around, which is what, as you said, a lot of marketers have done. For me, it is really helpful, not because I have the background of being an artist, but because of the soft skills that I had to learn as someone that was an artist and how that translates into working in a corporate environment. I also, when you're an artist or a musician at the level that I was at, you're a marketer for yourself. So you have to learn a lot of those marketing one on one things because whether or not you're going get a gig depends on that. So I think there's a lot of superpowers that people who come from those backgrounds, especially having done it professionally that they bring to marketing. For me, I am like the CEO of having a bunch of hobbies outside of work. And that's another way that I sort of use and harness my creative energy. So I do a lot of things that are creative adjacent that are exciting to me that kind of go hand in hand with the creativity that I have to do at work. I think marketers have to do a lot less creative work than people might think. I mean, a lot of what I do is crunch numbers and send emails. And sometimes I get to do cool stuff like hire a fortune teller for an event or design merch and do a lot of those things. But, yeah, I definitely have to invest in doing a lot of creative stuff outside of work as well just to sort of scratch that itch.

Jay Schwedelson: I think you need to start a podcast called creative adjacent because I think it would serve so many people in the marketing community or other communities that come from the creative background because it's almost like, you know, you played volleyball in high school, and then there's no professional volleyball league to go on to. So just it's a hard stop. And it's like you've done it your whole life, and it's this hard stop, and that kind of stinks. And so I love the fact that you're able to still tap into it with your your work life, but that you like you said, you're the CEO of your hobbies because, you know, that's such an amazing thing that you have in your, you know, in your background. So

Carly Baker: The other thing I the other thing I wanna say, not to cut you off, and I think this is really important to you. The the biggest challenge that I've had in my career, which is not something that I foresaw about or that I foresaw when I entered the corporate world is when you are an artist and a creative person, a lot of things that you focus on and that you do are for the sole benefit of yourself, right? When you're trying to get gigs, when you're practicing, when you're doing all these things, it's benefiting you. It's a very closed minded mindset that you have to have to be able to succeed. And you see a lot of yourself in that work and in the results of that work. And when you work a corporate job, you do everything on behalf of the company. It's a very big shift. And the lens in which you see yourself is very different. And so I'm always actively trying to invest in myself outside of work and do things that are exciting because it's a different relationship you have with your creativity and with your sense of self when you're building with or on behalf of someone else. And so that's a very important distinction and something that I try to be very aware of and to keep myself engaged, with other things so that I'm able to show up and be my full self at work and be excited while also knowing that like I have other things going on that are solely for the benefit of me.

Jay Schwedelson: I love that. That's amazing. So basically you have a life and me watching reality TV is my hobby. That's not having a life, but that's okay.

Carly Baker: That's an

Jay Schwedelson: that's an episode for another day. Alright. Listen. How does everybody, get involved with you, follow you? Where can they find you? We're gonna put all in the show notes.

Carly Baker: Okay. LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the place the place to be. Send me a DM. I try to answer them all. Yes. That means my inbox is very horrific, but I will get back to you. I post about podcasting, partnerships, events, things we got going on. So, yeah, give me a follow on LinkedIn.

Jay Schwedelson: Alright, Carly. You are awesome. I can't thank you enough for doing this. Everybody go follow her. We're gonna put in the show notes. You are cool.

Carly Baker: Thank you, Jay.

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